Technical and symbolic

Editing to the beat of the music

In lesson we were given a load of clips which were random footage of a women driving her car thorugh a city. It had close up clips of her face and the gear stick, it had shots oft he outside view of the car and her turning the wheel. With these clips I went through and I cropped the small clips out which were the best and put them all into the timeline randomly. We were then given a sound file of an upbeat song which could be used for a car chase scene. We were asked to edit the footage to the beat of the music, so I played the song and made a key at every beat which is where the clips would switch. Then I made sure that the clips fitted in to every section. I didn't get time to do much of the footage but I exported it onto you tube and added it in here. I think it was good to have a go at doing it ourselves as we got to see how it was like. I found it very satisfying to do and watch.

An good example of a video that is cut to the beat of the song is Stormzys, "big for your boots". This song is fast paced and quite a hectic video as all the cuts are dine on beat.

Mise en scene

Mise en scene is everything you see and all the elements that make up a scene. It stands for setting the stage in french. This could be the costumes, hair and makeup, colour and lighting, props, location and setting and also body language.

Genre and tropes

Music genres have been helped by cliches and tropes over the years to help identify a paticular genre of music. Audiences have now got used to different genres and are able to tell which style of music it is from recognizing the tropes and conventions within it. For example the music video to the song Country Dons by Ramsey features alot of cliches and stuff you would expect in a grime video. The main reason anyone can tell this is a grime song is from the mise en scene. The people in the video are all wearing very expensive designer clothing, covering their faces with masks and hoodies. This makes them appear unrecognizable and superior. They are showing off fancy cars and watches and also girls in very little clothing. Nowadays all the thing features in this video are very common in all grime videos and without hearing the actual music you would be able to tell the genre.

Another genre of music is R&B and the most popular artist that comes to mind when I think of that genre is Chris Brown. All of Chris browns music videos are very similar in what they feature. His new video for Go crazy is a good example as thy are all in a huge expensive house partying. The video also sexualizes girls as the grime video which is a cliche across many genres. Chris Browns video has alot of dancing which alot of R&b videos have as it is a song for dancing too. I noticed that the video is also very colorful and includes CGI which has been added in to make the video more interesting such as fireworks. As a fan of Chris Browns music, he has special fx in a lot of his music video which make them very nice to watch.

Fast and slow paced editing usually depends on the beat of the music for example with an upbeat song it would have a fast paced video to match the beat of the song.

CGI is used alot in music videos to make them more interesting. The reason some artists do this is because they may not have the budget to be able to get a good background which means they use a green screen to chroma key in backgrounds behind the artist or CGI in different effects to set the tone and mood for the video.

Parallel editing

Parallel editing is also known as cross cutting which involves a scene in a music video which cuts to a completely different scene or story. This could mean that two different storys are unfolding in one video and the scenes cut back and fourth to different locations that are happening at the same time. Jump cuts could also be used here which are shots that vary very slightly but look similar. Instead of having a long shot of something a jump cut, cuts to a shot of the same subject. Here is an example of this.

Diegetic and Non Diegetic sound in music video

If a music video features a live recording or performance this will be diegetic as the audience are hearing it as it was physically recorded. However if the music video is a narrative based concept video with the audio added in over the top this would be non diegtic as it has been added onto the video. Sometime music videos can feature both non diegtic and digetic where half way through the video the music will stop and there will be talking from the actors. An example of this is Justin Biebers video Confident. It switched from non diegetic to diegetic. The absence of non-diegetic music can therefore be used to make scenes seem more realistic.

Contrapuntal sound strongly contrasts with the mood or tone of the scene and parallel sound matched the tone or mood.